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Citizen Science Takes Off: Could Community Labs Hatch the Next Generation of Bio Innovators?

Get ready for “citizen science” to transform bioscience. In mid-October, 28-year-old Eri Gentry opened BioCurious, a nonprofit public-use biology laboratory in Sunnyvale, Calif., with 2,400 square feet of “hacker space for biotech.” Similar community labs are sprouting up elsewhere, too. Do-it-yourself biologists are setting up shop in garages, basements, and hacker spaces worldwide. Executive Director Gentry and five co-founders raised $35,000 for the BioCurious lab on Kickstarter.com (a site that enables anyone to raise money from the public for creative projects).

It all suggests we could start seeing more rapid progress in the biotechnology industry. Publications from USA TodaytoNaturehave heralded the global rise of “biohacker” activities that include personal genome investigations, synthetic biology experimentation, and reverse-engineered research tools. AP journalist Marcus Wohlsen is one of several who have compared DIY biologists to the early code hackers who revolutionized personal computing. His 2010 book Biopunk casts Gentry and her cohorts as pioneers of a movement that is determined to democratize DNA and transform bioscience.

The so-called biopunks have loftier ambitions than building new iPhone apps or social media companies. They want to contribute to society by reengineering life itself, and they want to do it outside the walls of academia and industry. Community labs like BioCurious aim to lower the barrier to entry for biotech startups by providing shared access to costly tools and connections to like-minded partners.

There are plenty of skeptics quick to argue that the next Amgen is unlikely to emerge from a biopunk lab any time soon. Even the best-funded bio-ventures have a high failure rate. Tom Knight, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab who was among the notable 1970s code hackers, keeps tabs on the biohacker scene through DIYbio.org’s 2,000-plus-member Google group. “I hate to sound elitist,” he says, “but you hear a lot of people talking in a naive way about doing very complex and difficult things that are challenging projects for the very best scientists and engineers in the world.” Biopunk author Wohlsen acknowledges, “There are core differences between computer hacking and biohacking that you can’t underestimate.”

Those differences, however, are diminishing as biotechnology tools and data become more accessible to the masses. Failed pharmaceutical company firesales are putting state-of-the-art tools within reach of community labs. And biohackers are already themselves engineering inexpensive open-source options for cheap DNA extraction kits, centrifuges, DNA amplification, and gel electrophoresis–key tools for sequencing and analyzing genes.

In addition, genomic technology is advancing so rapidly that it’s outpacing Moore’s law. While it cost $2 billion to sequence the first composite human genome 11 years ago, today anyone with $1,000 can obtain their own exome (the code that distinguishes any individual from the reference sequence) in two weeks. Open-science groups such as Genomes Unzipped and the Personal Genome Project are publicizing individual genome sequences, and free online tools such as GET-Evidence and Trait-o-Matic make it easy to analyze them. And with the new $100 GeneLaser kit, developed in a garage by DIYers Mac Cowell and Josh Perfetto, a hobbyist can extract and sequence a fragment of DNA from just about any living organism in a day without a lab.

George Church, a scientific advisor to the DNA testing company 23andMe and a founder of the Personal Genome Project, has trained several DIY bio pioneers in his Harvard Medical School genetics lab. Biohackers are to biotechnology what Steve Jobs was to the IBM S/360 mainframe, he says. Church sees biohackers as early adopters of technology that will eventually be in as many hands as the iPhone and predicts “a complete disruption of the IP landscape” as a result. “Just imagine getting access to knowledge that lets you do something about your genetic destiny. It’s as disruptive a technology as you can get.”

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The following may be of interest as a platform for Citizen Science — Social Executable English Knowledge for Explainable Database Question Answering. You can write database apps by typing Executable English knowledge into a browser, using your own words, jargon and phrases. The, you can run your app over large networked databases, and get English explanations of the results. Think evidence-based medicine, food security, energy independence, etc. The data are there, what’s missing is the knowledge to use it. You can Google Executable English to find this, or go directly to www.reengineeringllc.com . Shared use is free, and there are no advertisements.

Do you know how many portable inexpensive (re:cheap) pcr machine business models have been around in the last 15 years… Ya, like I am going to make glad bags, goo, alarm clocks and popcorn machines in my backyard cause IÈm gonna save 100$… ridi-culous. I have news for ya, Singapour has been doing this for years, the only difference is they actually make money…

homemade pcr machines is sooo yesterday… seriously… why doen’t anyone build their own backyard cars, planes or home heaters…mom and pop pcr machines are a dime a dozen… all of them more ridiculous than the next. There is no revolution in making a heat sink machine!

We’re on the cusp of a working revolution, moving toward a “free-agent” model with people engaging in their work in very different ways. Over the next couple years, we will see a massive shift in how we work.

BioCurious and similar hackerspaces like it (another example is TechShop in SF and Menlo Park, which describes itself as a do-it-yourself, open-access fabrication and prototyping machine shop with over 17,000 sq. ft. of space) exemplify the popular trend of coworking.

At its most basic level, coworking is the phenomenon of workers coming together in a shared or collaborative workspace for one or more of these reasons: to reduce costs by having shared facilities and equipment, to access a community of fellow entrepreneurs, and to seek out collaboration within and across fields.

One of the biggest misconception of coworking is that it’s only for the office set. BioCurious is proving that.

Many workshops, do-it-yourself spaces, and hacker enclaves cater to inventors, steampunk enthusiasts, tinkerers, mechanics, and scientists looking for heavy machinery, equipment, and tools for their projects. They come here to satisfy their Tesla coil fixations, run their lab experiments, use 3-D printers, launch a robotics assembly line, and test prototypes. Artists also come here, looking for floor space not desk space, to solder and fuse sculptures or giant installations. These types of coworking spaces are veritable creative commons.

For our book on coworking, ‘Working in the UnOffice’ (www.CoworkingGuide.com, Night Owls Press), in which we interviewed over 30 freelancers/startups and 19 coworking space founders from across the U.S., we touch on this phenomenon.

Noise Bridge nestled in the working neighborhood of the Mission District in San Francisco describes their space as a nexus for “technological and artistic collaboration and experimentation”. They particularly cater to big scale art projects, “with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.”

From a cost perspective it makes sense to seek out shared spaces. Large machines and tools are expensive, too specialized, and cumbersome to keep and maintain for solo or pet projects. By bringing together different people, the infrastructure and equipment are maximized.

Many of these spaces like TechShop in Menlo Park, CA (they also have locations in Raleigh, NC, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA and soon Dearborn, MI) and Common Spaces in Brooklyn, NY pitch themselves as “pre-incubators” for small projects to be prototyped and played with, which may or may not later blossom into full-scale businesses or projects. Whether or not projects expand into something profitable, the spaces provide a low-risk way to learn new skills and experiment.

Thanks for elaborating on this trend, Gendeg. It looks like FB investor Thiel shares your observation that “these ‘pre-incubators’ for small projects” have a chance to blossom into full-scale businesses or projects. See today’s news about his launch of Breakthrough Labs: http://onforb.es/vhbJRW

Oh thanks for the link. With his unconventional views on higher edu (i.e. calling on students to forgo college to work on start-ups) and clean tech, Thiel’s foray into science research with Breakthrough Labs should be interesting to watch!

My god, is that what they teach at MBA schools now, the lingo you use is RADAculous !!!! Hackerspace ??? Wow, you mean you finally realised that power suits made you look like crooks, so now you are channeling your inner Zuckerberg impression ? An office is an office dude, not to long ago there were no cubicles and some of them might even have a wharehouse beside it and even (yikes) a small factory next door… can you believe it ?